


Eidolon

by the_original_starfruit



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Boys In Love, Canon Compliant, Canon Continuation, Character Development, Dead Poets Meetings, Declarations Of Love, Falling In Love, Fluff, G-G-G-Ghosts!, Healing, Heavy Angst, Keating is Beleaguered, M/M, Poor Todd, Recovery, Shakespeare, Supernatural - Freeform, because cmon, exploration of the afterlife, hmmm, this is Neil we're talking about
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-06-20 11:17:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15533043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_original_starfruit/pseuds/the_original_starfruit
Summary: Todd always preferred to stay quiet, and the days following Neil's death are no exception.Even at Welton, among the Poets, he'd been happier in the outskirts, tucked safely into a corner of his mind and a corner of the room. In his perpetual silence, he had always noticed the quiet ones - the ones like him, who seemed to pass right under other people's eyes.But everything changes when he starts to see Neil.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *slides into the fandom 6,528 years too late* hello friends
> 
> so i adore dead poets and could probably write a thousand word essay right here supporting that point, but i'll just let you take my word for it. suffice to say i watched it for the first time at sixteen, and in the two years since then, every single rewatch has been just as meaningful, deeply painful, and exhilarating as that first time. so uh yeah hopefully the feeling came through or something,, i'll just let you enjoy the story now

Todd was despondent.

            No, that wasn’t quite right.

He was despairing.

But no – that wasn’t quite right, either. The words wouldn’t come to try and quantify this sadness, this despondency or sick despair. There had been too _much_ in the past forty-eight hours: too much crying, too much breathing, too much disbelief. Too much time spent sitting and holding his own sides in the aching cleanliness of the snow. He felt cracked, somehow, calm with it, as if all his feelings had found a hairline fracture and drained out of his buzzing head.

            And right then, standing in the doorway of his room at Welton, Todd was just numb.

Dispassionately, he surveyed the wide wooden planks of the floor, the twin desks, the clattering radiator that had sometimes served as a window seat. Both beds were there, but the one on the right had been stripped empty; it stood as husked and faceless as a ghost.

            Todd gulped around the lump in his throat and went to his desk. He opened a drawer, not seeing the sundry objects that rolled and clattered under his fingers – dulled pencils, jars of ink, journals, watch batteries, a shrivelled apple – because he was wondering about the next pair of boys who would inhabit this room. Would they run lines, eyes dancing, their tongues bringing new life to the dusty rhythms of Shakespeare? Would they feel poems fill them to the brim with wine and fire, their minds humming faster than their fingers could transfer words to page? Or would they sleepwalk through the monochrome of normalcy, men of gray moving through the world incapable of bleeding rich hues of scarlet and azure and gold?

            _There was no one like him,_ Todd thought to himself, and then felt the familiar burn spread behind his nose. He swallowed the tears. His breaths quickened, panic and helplessness rising up from somewhere under the nook of his throat, and his knuckles whitened around the edge of his desk.

            He stood for a few minutes, trying to rein in his galloping pulse, and felt a prickle on the back of his neck – someone was there. Quickly, he relaxed his face, letting light seep back into his stinging eyes. He looked up.

            The breath he had fought so hard to regain left him all at once, and his knees turned to shivering jelly. He struggled to breathe through a sucker-punched stomach, but found room for nothing but a choked and airless whoop.

Neil was standing next to the bed.

His hands were in his pockets, sleeves of his favorite sweater falling loose over his thumbs, and his expression was a ringing slap to the face – it was _burning,_ intense as the quivering moment before a lightning strike. His gaze was riveted on Todd, drilling his feet to the floor, and as Todd watched, his dark eyes widened with disbelief.

            Todd felt a scream bubble up in his throat, but he opened his mouth and it came out a thin whisper, the sound wind might make in reeds. Neil reached for him, moving as if through honey. Todd’s eyes dropped to his lips, which were moving frantically in utter silence.

            Then Todd blinked, and he was standing alone in an empty room.

He fell to his knees, bile rising in his throat, his brain hurling disconnected words up from a plethora of static. _Sweat. Mercy. Tremble. Simile. Vomit. Enflame. Gh –_

He forced himself to his feet. The room felt close, the slanting walls threatening to collapse on his keening head. He began grabbing things, books and papers, blankets and clothes, stuffing all into his suitcase without order or discrimination. He squeezed his eyes shut.

_This isn’t real._

“I’m going crazy,” He whispered, hoarse and sour, and tried not to feel what he was feeling – because under the fear, the shock, and the unreality of it all, his heart had leapt to see Neil’s face.

 

                                                            *   *   *   *   *

 

The funeral was cold. The sky was steel-gray and heavy, the cypresses in the graveyard dusted with drifts of powdery snow. Todd watched a portly man speak without hearing him, watched Mrs. Perry sob hysterically, her face buried in Mr. Perry’s shoulder. He felt a dull hatred for Neil’s father, burning a hole through his stomach, and he swallowed the words that were coming unbidden with the accusing rhythm of a dirge: _you killed him, you killed him, you killed him._ His own father’s hand was a lead weight on his shoulder. A few people down, Meeks cried silently, nose red and chin trembling. Pitts had a hand on his lower back. Next to him, Knox stood with Chris, his hand in hers, eyes hooded and far away.

            The grave was jarring against the white snow, the soil’s yellowish clay color ugly as an open wound. Todd was disconnected from himself, his mind detached as the casket was lowered down into the frozen earth. He felt his mother’s hand join his father’s, and touched his own cheek to find it wet.

            The car ride to the wake was stiflingly quiet. When they got there, the rooms in Neil’s house were overwarm, severe and silent as a church. Drifting aimlessly around clumps of people, occasionally running a hand over seats where Neil once sat and banisters that he once touched, Todd thought they would’ve been better off in the funeral home.

            Eventually, he found himself wandering up the wide staircase and into a hall lined with dark wood. Something was pulling at him, perhaps an exhausted corner of his brain that still wanted to think. He gave in to it and picked a door at random.

_You know this is his room._

Todd swallowed. There was no reason he couldn’t go in here. Besides, probably better he go in Neil’s room than end up wandering somewhere he was even less welcome. He reached for the doorknob, hesitated, then slipped inside.

            It was frigid, and Todd wasted no time in crossing the room to close the open window. He brushed snow to the floor, and his hand knocked against something – the crown of thorns. His breath hitched. He grabbed onto it, feeling the twigs crackle and stick in his hands, and he loosened his hold. This was the only part of Neil in the room; the walls were white, the floors dark, the bed made so neatly it was painful. The desk was uncluttered and clear of chaos, completely unlike Neil’s side of the room at Welton, where drifts of papers, stacks of books, and looseleaf bits of script spilled from every surface. Todd found himself breathing a sigh of relief, a crazy fragment of thought – _this place isn’t him, so he can’t be here –_ running through his head. He swallowed, fear rising in him, and sat on the bed. His hands tingled and smarted where they tightened around the crown.

            “Todd? Hey! Todd!”

His head snapped up to see Knox in the doorway. He opened his mouth to say hello, but nothing would come – he just stuttered out some sounds that were too quiet to hear. Looking concerned, Knox came in, Pitts and Meeks trailing behind him.

            “What’re you doing in here?” He asked, eyes darting around the blank walls. Todd shrugged, and there were a few minutes of brooding silence among them, the type of silence they were used to now – silence where nothing could be said to fill the gaping absence in their midst, so nobody said anything at all.

            “W-where’s Charlie?” Todd finally got out. _He was Neil’s best friend, and I didn’t even see him at the funeral._

“Stayed home,” Knox said, jumping gratefully on the topic, “said he couldn’t be trusted not to deck Mr. Perry in the face. I guess if he was willing to admit that, it’s a good thing he stayed away.” He gave an awkward little bray of laughter.

            “He knows it was that bastard’s fault,” Meeks said thickly, his nose stuffed, “I mean, we all know. But Nuwanda wouldn’t’ve let him stand there like that and cry over – over –“ He broke off abruptly and turned away to hide his crumpling face.

            “Over Neil,” Pitts finished stonily. Todd bit his lip, and saw Knox swallow. The room fell silent again, and for almost a minute the only sound was of their mingled breathing. Then a light tap came at the doorframe. Todd sprang guiltily off the bed as they all turned to the door, only to see Chris poke her head in.

            “Knox? Oh. Sorry to interrupt.” She met Todd’s eyes for a moment, her normally bright gaze subdued. “I’m going home now.”

            “Oh! Let me drive you,” Knox said, leaping forward so quickly he almost tripped on his own pants leg. Pitts turned his snort into a small cough.

            “That’s really okay. I can drive myself, I just wanted to let you know. If you want to stay with your friends…” Her voice faded down the hallway, lost under Knox’s chivalric protests.

            “I should go too,” said Meeks, wiping his nose roughly on the back of his sleeve. Todd nodded, even managing to lift a corner of his mouth when he added, “Shame I won’t have Knoxious to chauffer me home.”

            “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll, uh, see you guys,” Todd muttered, his brain already fogging back over. He barely heard their goodbyes, and he had sunk back down onto the bed by the time the door swung shut behind them.

            He blew out a shaky breath, then took another one in. He tried to turn inwards, to escape to the place in the back of his mind that had always been his refuge when the words stuck in his mouth. But his thoughts were incomprehensible to him, a chittering black void of _lost_ and _dead,_ words that loomed large as paper giants, thin and meaningless. Although he had grown accustomed to chaos at Welton, to Neil and Mr. Keating and the Dead Poets changing his way of thinking, turning his mind into something more than a safety blanket between him and the world, this particular chaos terrified him. It felt like a stranger’s shadow in his mind – like Neil’s shadow in his mind. He cursed Neil for it, for turning his world upside down, first in such a wonderful way, and then flipping it, cursing it, consuming his thoughts until he had not even his most reliable refuge left to run to.

            “God _damn it,_ Neil,” He whispered through gritted teeth. The back of his neck began to crawl. His stomach dropped to his feet, and he looked up, heart pounding through his temples.

            Neil stood in the very center of the room, feet bare and stance wide. He was wearing pajama pants and no shirt, and his smooth skin prickled with goosebumps. His lips were a pale lavender. He reached for his Puck crown, glancing towards the window, and Todd thought of icy air biting into skin, the smell of smoke, the click of a drawer and a trigger. A gunshot in a sleeping house.

            “No,” Todd whispered, his throat closing, “No. I – I saw you be _buried –_ I – “

Neil shook his head once, his eyes misty. He mouthed one word, and this time the movement of his lips was clear.

            _Todd._

He lifted his arms, palms up, supplicating, and Todd squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could, hoping he would disappear. He kept them closed to be safe, and he was unaware he was sobbing until he heard distant shouts and felt someone shaking his shoulders. His tongue was frozen to the roof of his mouth, but he couldn’t stop the flood of half-words that poured out around it, like a river around a glacier.

            “I – I – oh, oh my g – Neil – he – he w-w – I – “

“Shh, shhh. Shhhh. It’s okay. You’re okay, honey.” His mother rocked him, quick and frantic, and he pressed into her chest, more to hide his face than for any comfort she could give. He felt feverish, and remembered being very sick and very small: the way she’d sat on the edge of his bed, her cool hand on his forehead. Rocking.

            “Chin up, son. Stop crying. We’re taking you home.” His father’s voice was stern with a rare undertone of worry, and Todd shuddered bonelessly. He allowed himself to be led from the room, keeping his eyes shut the whole way out of the house.

            On the car ride home, he stared out the window, watching the graveyard flash by for a good three miles. Its stone walls, crumbling with age, looked almost black against the snow, and everything else was pale and ghostly in the early twilight.


	2. Chapter 2

Charlie scowled at the snow that sloshed over the edge of his shoe, making his almost-numb ankle prickle and sting. The graveyard was admittedly spooky – it wasn’t quite dark out yet, and the tall evergreens still looked formidably black against the sky. He kicked halfheartedly at a fist-sized rock that stood out like a sore thumb between two orderly rows of headstones.

            He trudged along, leaving tracks in the fresh snow, until he started to see the scuffles made by many feet before his. There was also fresh dirt, frozen into ugly clods and mixing with the slush, tamped down by a whole procession of mourners. Finally, he got close enough to read the headstone.

NEIL A. PERRY - HONORED STUDENT, BELOVED SON - 1942 – 1959.

Charlie grit his teeth at the utter mundanity, the _genericness_ of it. If he had been in charge of making this shitty headstone, he would’ve found way more words to describe Neil – better descriptors than ‘student’ and ‘son’. _Actor. Wordsmith. Dreamer. Journalist. Prankster. Ringleader. Best friend._

“Sorry I couldn’t be at the funeral, buddy,” Charlie said suddenly to the headstone, his voice so hoarse it surprised him. “Didn’t want to freeze my balls off in this weather. Seemed unfair to deprive the world of the next generation of the Dalton bloodline.” He paused, unable to crack a smile at even his own wit.

“Nah. I actually didn’t think you’d want me to come, anyway. I figured it would be more of the same bullshit. Read a prayer, sing a hymn, hire a guy who knows nothing about you to preach on how much you’ll be missed. Plus, I would’ve decked your father.” Charlie swallowed, hard. “It would’ve been spectacular! Nuwanda seeks revenge on the abominable Mister Perry.”

            Charlie felt his throat grow sore. He couldn’t look at the headstone anymore, so he blinked up at the snow that had started again, drifting ever-so-gently down from the steel-colored sky.

“I don’t know who’s supposed to run Dead Poets now,” he continued, “we’re done for. You hear what happened? Expelled. All of us. Cameron ratted, and the Poets are done for because we wouldn’t blame Keating for –“

            Charlie’s throat suddenly squeezed shut altogether, and he felt a burn almost like anger rise up behind his nose.

            “So stupid, talking like you can hear me. Talking to a rock.” His voice was thick. The burning had moved into his eyes, and the sky blurred into the trees. “So damn st –“

            He cut himself off as his peripheral vision caught movement, and his pulse rocketed up into his throat. A figure was skirting the path between two tall cypresses, wearing a long coat that showed dark against the snow. It was walking quickly away, head tucked, and Charlie squinted at the familiar gait, barely daring to believe what he saw.

            “O Captain, my Captain!” He shouted, scrambling away from Neil’s grave so fast he slipped a little in the snow. The figure hesitated, teetering on the brink of a run, and then seemed to resign and settle. Charlie jogged up and felt a rusty little smile stretch his mouth at Keating’s familiar expression.

            “Hello, Mister Dalton,” Keating sighed, and Charlie fought the fierce impulse to hug him. He stuck out his hand instead, and shook enthusiastically when Keating took it.

            “We thought you’d gone back to England,” Charlie said, breathless, “what are you doing here?” Keating shook his head, once, and gave a tight smile.

            “If only funding would allow. My lovely wife and I are conspiring to buy a plane ticket as we speak. My foreseeable future, though, is in America.” The smile grew brittle and broke. “As for your second question, I – thought I would come to pay my respects.”

            Charlie had never heard Keating’s voice hesitate like that, and it set a little flutter of unease dancing in his chest.

            “I didn’t go to the funeral,” Charlie blurted, and Keating’s eyebrows shot up. He rushed to explain himself, unsure and fumbling. “I figured it would be – more of the same, you know? Like that stupid ceremony at Welton. It felt irrelevant. They didn’t really care about Neil.”

            Keating’s mouth was set in a familiar, sympathetic line, but Charlie noted with horror that his eyes were wet. They both stood in the swelling silence, and Charlie felt the unease clench around his ribs. He had never suspected Keating of being at a loss for words.

            Finally, Keating cleared his throat.

“Wise of you. Sometimes the best way to honor someone is to do what he would have wanted.”

            Charlie opened his mouth, but Keating cut him off with a quick hand, clapping awkwardly down on his shoulder.

            “I should get out of the cold, and so should you. Frostbite strikes the unsuspecting, even the brazen young.”

            Charlie felt his brow wrinkle in confusion as Keating turned and began to walk briskly away. He had so much to say, so many questions – about Neil, about Nolan and Welton, the future of the Dead Poets, and what they were supposed to do next. It was unthinkable that Keating didn’t have _answers –_ or, at the very least, some of the same questions. He followed, grabbing at the sleeve of Keating’s coat.

            “But – Captain – since you’re here, don’t you think we should get the guys together? To talk? Don’t – don’t you want the Dead Poets to stay-?”

            Keating was shaking his head with a peculiar grimace on his face. Gently, he tugged his sleeve free from Charlie’s grasp.

            “The administration at Welton, as well as many of your parents, feel it’s best that I stay away from you gentlemen from now on,” He said, his tone unreadable. Charlie blinked, confused.

            “Since when has that mattered? We’re not under Nolan's thumb anymore, not me or Knox or Todd, not even you. There’s no reason wh –“

            Keating cut him off with an air of brutal finality.

“Perhaps I should make myself more clear – _I_ feel it’s best that I stay away from you from now on. Take care, Mister Dalton. And wear a scarf.”

            Charlie stood, shocked into silence, as Keating strode away through the snow. He was nearly to the stand of trees again by the time Charlie could speak, and he shouted out at Keating’s retreating back.

            “We _vouched_ for you!” He yelled, feeling something physical twist low in his stomach as Keating didn’t hesitate, didn’t turn around. “We – that rat Cameron was the only one who sold you out, because carpe diem _meant something to us, damn it!”_ He couldn’t express why he felt so betrayed – he just stood in the snow, feet numb and face hot, and watched Keating flee. He ground his teeth. _How could he just leave us? Isn’t it enough that Neil already –_

 _“COWARD!”_ He finally bellowed as Keating disappeared. “Coward,” He muttered again, his voice cracking, and swiped roughly at his eyes with his sleeve.

            _You don’t just abandon the Poets because you’re too afraid. You don’t just abandon your_ friends.

The snow was beginning to fall more heavily, piling up on Neil’s headstone. Charlie stood for a long time, not feeling his fingers or his ears go numb – he was hot inside his coat, burning with anger, a smarting bewilderment, and an odd short of shame.

            “Fuck this,” He muttered, and kicked out at Neil’s grave, adding a little spray of snow to the fresh mounds and piles. He began to trudge into the thick winter darkness. As he went, he pretended the wetness on his cheeks was melting snow – and he almost convinced himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi i am so sorry for the ridiculously long hiatus :') the good news is that i'm super inspired again and you can look forward to regular updates !! whee !!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my poor boys :'))

The sky was white. The earth was white. Snow, maybe, or something cold and empty – a blank piece of paper, an envelope holding nothing. There was a sound somewhere far away, and Todd began to wander towards it, feeling his feet pick up and drift. He was walking on wind. Disconnected thoughts blurred around him, nonsensical in their individuality: a jellyfish, a grasping hand, two chains, a marigold, a broken rose. He reached for each one but fell short as he whipped past, losing them to the fog.

            The sound was the low thunder of a voice, echoing larger-than-life from a shape that loomed up – a colosseum, wavering as if seen through a fire. Todd felt dread build in his mouth and drag at his feet, but he kept moving forward. A bird squirmed from a crack in the white stone, then flew away.

            _“ – all our company here?”_

_“You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip.”_

Todd slipped through a wall. Inside was a great restless crowd that shifted and whispered like insects through grass. It seemed he could feel the dread outside his body now, like some clinging external parasite, and see the shadowy outline of it wrap around his throat. He squinted at the stage, small and far away, and the two figures standing there.

            _“Here is the scroll of every man’s name, which is thought fit, all throughout Athens, to play in our interlude before the Duke and Duchess on his wedding-day at night.”_

_“First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on: then read the names of the actors: and so grow to a point.”_

The actors stood oddly, their arms stiff as pokers at their sides. As Todd grew closer to the stage, melting through the crowd like a breath of wind, he saw they had no faces, only shadows in place of mouths.

_“Marry, our play is: ‘The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe.”_

_“A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a merry. Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your actors by the scroll. Masters, spread yourselves.”_

There was a sudden disturbance onstage. Todd watched with horror as several bodies floated up through the floor, coming to rest on the stage like dead fish rising to the still surface of a lake. The one in the center stood, eerily stiff, arms folded across his chest. It was Neil.

            _“Answer as I call you. Neil Perry, the actor?”_

Neil opened his eyes. When he spoke his line, his voice was low and flat.

            _“Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed.”_

_“You, Neil Perry, are set down for Pyramus.”_

Neil stared straight ahead, eyes unfocused.

_“What is Pyramus? A lover or a tyrant?”_

Todd felt the dread swell and burst.

_“A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love.”_

Todd was nearly level with the stage. Neil smiled. A gunshot rang out, loud enough to hurt, echoing through the dead silence of the cavernous room. Neil crumpled to the floor, painting it wet and red.

The colosseum filled with a storm of frantic applause.

Todd woke gasping. His heart kicked in great leaps and jagged bounds, like a jackrabbit trying to burst from his chest. His hands were fisted so tightly that his fingernails bit into his palms, and when he opened them, the sight of blood smeared in the crease of his hand was enough to send nausea sliding up his throat.

            He stumbled as fast as he could to the bathroom. Afterwards, he sat dazed on the floor, his forehead pressing into the icy rim of the toilet bowl, until the grayish predawn light touched him through the window.

            When Todd knew he couldn’t go much longer without a sharp rap on the bathroom door, he stood and left. He took a notebook from his room and his scarf, coat, and boots from the back door. He eased the screen door shut behind him and breathed a sigh of relief that froze instantly in the still air.

            Todd’s thoughts buzzed and tumbled as he slipped past the line of trees separating their backyard from the frozen path of the stream. _I went into the woods to live deliberately._ These were the same woods that encircled Welton. His fingers found the pen in his pocket, and his gloves skated over it, anxious. He walked quickly, stomping his feet to keep them warm. An hour, maybe more, passed unmarked, except by the changing length of the trees’ striped shadows on the snow.

            Todd blinked, finally, and looked up in surprise. He recognized this particular stretch of the stream – it was very close to the Poet’s cave, a lazy, shallow bend they had come to a few times to fool around and skip rocks on the water. Overhead, a familiar holly tree towered, its glossy leaves dotted with berries. The ground underneath was free of snow save a small powdering, and Todd sat gratefully, leaning against the gnarled silver trunk. He heard a few birds call to each other, songs bouncing through the otherwise silent woods. The wind hushed through the empty treetops. His fingers shaking, Todd pulled out his notebook and opened it to a fresh page.

 

_a midwinter day’s dream is that you still scramble to fill the room._

_holly bows, praying for your reincarnation in the snow:_

_a thin veneer of blood under ice, steel, and smoke._

 

Todd rubbed his mouth and scratched out the page. The words weren’t hitting any marks. They just glared up at him, bold and black, seeming to mock in tiny chittering voices.

            _Where’s that poet in you now? On the trash heap in your room? At Welton, under the radiator? Dead? Cold? Six feet under sod?_

There was no wind, or sudden flurry of snow, or lightning bolt from the heavens, or anything else that could be remotely considered a cosmic announcement. There was just Neil in front of him in the snow, wearing a striped scarf and fingerless gloves, with his coat flapping open and his cheeks flushed pink.

            Todd’s pen tumbled as his fingers went slack and numb. _No. No._ His eyes slammed shut, and he dragged his hands over them for good measure. He heard nothing, _nothing, nothing,_ just the blood pounding hot against his eardrums, until Neil spoke.

            “Hey. Todd. You’re – you’re okay.”

Absurdly, Todd heard himself laugh, high-pitched and hysterical.

            “Am I, Neil? B-b-b-because I’m pretty sure I’m having some sort of – of psychotic break right now. I’m – I’m, uh, I’m t-talking to a figment of my imagination.”

            “No you’re not,” Neil said. The sincerity was so automatic, so unconscious, and so intrinsically _Neil_ that Todd opened his eyes in spite of himself.

            Neil was close, crouching down lightly with his hands on his thighs, leaning forward with a look of such earnest concern that Todd had to bring his head back up. He grit his teeth, feeling tears catch and freeze in his eyelashes even as hot anger guttered in his chest – anger at his own subconscious for being so masochistic. Imaginary Neil’s cheekbones were just as sharp as they’d been in life, his lips just as rosy.

“W-wh-what’s happening, then?” He challenged. Neil sighed, falling back on his heels.

            “I don’t _know,”_ he said, deflating. He looked scared, and suddenly very young. “I’m still trapped, Todd. I’m gone, but I’m still trapped. I know it’s crazy, I barely believe it myself, but –“ He broke off in frustration, and Todd bit down hard on his tongue as Neil looked up, eyes bright and earnest as sunlight on water. “I keep getting dragged back. And you’re the only one who can see me.”

            “Like I said. Figment of my imagination,” Todd said shakily, trying to ignore the terrible fear shuddering out from his core. He was so afraid he could barely breathe – because his ideas of reality were struggling, against his will, to shift, to accommodate this new and impossible information.

            “You don’t really believe that, do you?” Neil said, his dark eyes locked on Todd’s, searching. “You just want to believe it because it’s safe. You think poetry is magic, Todd. I know you do. Can’t you believe some things are unexplainable?”

            _No,_ Todd tried to whisper, _I can’t,_ but the words died on his tongue as Neil reached into his coat pocket. He removed a piece of paper and offered it to Todd, his gaze frank and steady. It was a newspaper clipping.

            _BRUTAL SUICIDE OF WELTON STUDENT HAUNTS TOWN,_ screamed the headline.

Todd sucked in a breath that caught and ripped down his throat, and suddenly he was drowning in the freezing air. Watching the sunlight catch in Neil’s ruffled hair stabbed him through, because Neil was really lying in a box with his brain blown out a hole in his head.

            Neil’s eyes widened, and he dropped the paper, reaching into the space between them.

“Hey – Todd, I’m sorry.”

His fingertips were red with the cold. He had a hangnail on his right thumb. For one slow, dizzying second, as he watched Neil reach out, Todd was convinced he would feel the steady pressure of those fingers on his arm, warm and undeniable and real.

            Then he blinked, and Neil was gone.

He blinked again, twice. A tiny wind sighed through. Across the stream, a crescendo of snow caught the light as it pattered down from a branch.

He looked down, and the newspaper clipping was still there, beginning to wrinkle in the wet snow. Todd reached out to touch it, to make it vanish. Instead, it crumpled as his fingers closed around it.

All his breath left him in one great, watery whoop, and all the blood rushed from his head. He teetered on the edge of a faint, feeling the paper drop from fingers that were once again loose and slack.

He sat with his head between his knees for a long time, until he felt the cold soaking in from every direction. Then he opened his eyes and stared, long and hard, at the innocuous piece of paper in the snow.

He came to a decision and reached out, stuffing it into his pocket like he could force it to disappear.

            Then he stood and started the long walk home. The paper didn’t disappear in the slightest – instead, it burned holes in his pocket the entire way.

 

                                                            *   *   *   *   *

 

The next time Neil appeared, Todd was waiting.

            He had gone back to the woods, stopping by the holly tree to look for a second set of footprints that wasn’t there.

            Eventually, he’d walked on, pausing at the cave. It had seemed he could hear Poet’s meetings past, snatches of lilting words, echoes of drumbeats and laughter. Todd had swallowed, unable to go in. Instead, he’d set himself down on a rock outside, thinking of Frost and Whitman and other, more recent poets.

Now, he blew on his fingers and watched the sky through the trees. The sunset was starting to spill over the eggshell sky, fragile, pale, and watery, and then Neil stepped from the long blue shadow of a maple tree. He slipped into the sun, backlit by rich, late-afternoon pink.

 _Never one to miss a dramatic entrance,_ Todd thought through a shiver.

“Mister Anderson,” Neil said politely, tipping an imaginary hat. That little smile played around the corners of his mouth, as it always did when he invited Todd in on a particularly good joke. Todd felt his heart clench, and he touched the newspaper clipping in his pocket. This was real, real, real.

“When I was little, six or seven years old, my parents took me to Jeffrey’s school,” Todd began without preamble, patting the rock next to him. Neil’s eyebrows shot up, but he sat obligingly. “I – I don’t remember what it was for. Probably some sort of awards ceremony. All I remember is a big crowd in the auditorium, and this – this man near the front, by the stage.” He took a deep breath, remembering the incomprehensible chatter of a hundred conversations, the dimness of the enormous room. “People kept bumping into him. No one would look at him. The guy was crying – he kept taking out a handkerchief, and, and waving it around – like he was trying to, I don’t know, to signal someone – but it was like he wasn’t even there.”

Todd chanced a look from under his eyelashes. Neil was watching him, worrying his lip between his teeth, his eyes sharp and focused.

“I – I remember asking my mother who the crying man was. She k-kind of smiled, right, and – and asked me why anyone would be crying in a school auditorium. We walked past him, on the way out, and he _looked_ at me, straight on – because he knew I could see him.”

It hung in the air between them, and Todd turned to Neil. He looked stunned – his lips parted, his eyes wide and teetering on the edge of believing what he heard.

“I guess I can see ghosts,” Todd summarized, feeling a strange, detached sort of calm that he recognized as displaced panic.

            “You believe me,” Neil stated, little more than a whisper, and then he whooped, loud enough to make Todd flinch a little in his seat. “You _believe_ me! I knew you’d come around!” He jumped up and spun, the edge of his coat flaring around him. The grin on his face was enough to level mountains.

            “I don’t know why, it’s crazy!” Todd said, laughing, and when Neil made a face, eyes bulging, he stood up too. This time, Neil yawped, and they danced for a wild moment, caught in the strange place between day and soft, purpling dusk. Todd watched Neil’s upturned face, the smile that stretched his mouth and crinkled his eyes into thin slits of joy, and he felt his own smile shift, growing hard and wide at the corners. His next breath tore a strange sound from his chest.

The jig was up. There had been a persistent little hope, a chance so slim that Todd hadn’t even allowed himself to consider it, that Neil had somehow faked it. That maybe it had all been an elaborate prank, and Neil had been slipping out of the woods all Puck and moonlight to steal Todd away. Alive, alive – thrillingly secret, dead to perhaps the world, but he would have chosen Todd: _alive._

The truth was finally discovered, and of course it left Todd’s feet cold. Neil was dead, and although he was halfway here, he would never, ever come back.

            Todd could hear his own sobs echo back at them through the trees, guttural and ugly, and Neil was by his side in an instant.

            _“Todd.”_ He said it like it meant more than Todd’s name. His voice was full with something threatening to overflow.

            “Why’d you do it, Neil?” Todd blubbered, and Neil’s face twisted in pain. “You cuh-could’ve – run away. Gone to New York, or – or London. We could’ve met up, the Poets w-would’ve come. Yuh-your father –“

            Suddenly Neil was right there, his face inches from Todd’s, hands near but not daring to touch. His eyes were wide and desperate, and Todd thought of moonlight, dreamlike on the trigger: a slow, thoughtful pull and descent.

            “I _had to,_ Todd,” He said. His voice was certain, absolute. “There was nothing else that would have worked. It was leave, or live the life Keating told us not to. _Ordinary._ What d’you think my father would’ve done if he’d found me going to New York – shrugged and said, ‘sure, son, I’ll let you give up on medical school’?” He laughed, quick and bitter. “He never would’ve stopped. It was the only thing big enough to convince him I was serious.”

            Todd forced a wavering breath back into his lungs and swiped the tears from his eyes. His heart ached for Neil, hard and frantic and desperate – but it ached for itself, too.

            “You left _us,_ Neil,” He forced out. “Not just your father.”

Neil, suddenly, looked rather like he had been slapped.

            “I – I had to do it,” He whispered, eyes wide and white in the deep shadows of his face. Then: “I’m sorry.”

            Todd just shook his head, fighting but not succeeding against the tears that rose back into his eyes. Neil stole a breath, quick and shallow, and then he was pressing close as he brought his arms up around Todd.

            It was – strange. Neil had no temperature and no solidity, just a very light and somehow transparent push, like wind condensed down into the shape of a person. Todd saw Neil’s hand slip through and disappear as he went to grip Todd’s arm, and he stepped back, afraid that Neil would vanish entirely.

            “Wait,” Neil muttered, low and focused, and he closed his eyes. All of Todd’s hair stood on end. Then there was something after all – Neil’s arms slipping under his, wavering like water but touchable and real.

            Todd broke then. He tightened his hold, trying to fist his hands in the back of Neil’s coat.

“Careful,” Neil breathed as Todd felt him quiver, and Todd forced his fingers open again. He flattened his hands out, and when he smoothed his palms over Neil’s back, he was almost able to pretend this was normal, that this was what they should have shared after the final performance. Todd dropped his head to Neil’s shoulder, crying long, shuddering breaths into the crook of his neck.

            He felt Neil touch his head, tentative, barely more than a breath of air. He nodded, and then Neil was stroking through the hair at the back of his neck. Todd closed his eyes and let the storm sweep through him, finally, without trying to stop it or fight it or tamp it back down into his chest, and the moon had risen by the time they both looked up.

            “What do we do?” Todd asked, finally, and Neil just shook his head.

“I don’t know,” Neil admitted, troubled, “I don’t know.”

            They were quiet after that. Neil grew less solid again, until Todd couldn’t feel their arms brushing together even where they touched. He didn’t know if it was the strange silver flatness of the moonlight, but he thought Neil _looked_ less solid, too – a shadow falling across his face seemed to fall through him. For the first time, the word _ghost_ fell heavy and true in Todd’s mind. He gulped.

            “I – I should go home,” Todd said. “Maybe, um, have some time to think while I’m sleeping.”

            Neil laughed a little at that. He looked exhausted.

“Can a gentleman at least walk you home?” He asked, teasing, and Todd felt blood rocket to his cheeks, almost painfully hot in the freezing air.

            “I – I, uh, y-yuh-yeah, I guess,” He stammered.

They wandered through the woods, too tired to talk. Todd shivered uncontrollably, his hands jammed deep in his pockets. He was grateful for the scarf he’d thought to bring a thousand hours ago. The woods were ethereal, black and white edged in hard silver, the fine twigs casting lacy shadows in soft blue pockets of snow. A great horned owl hooted from deep in some woebegone hollow.

            They were only a little past the holly tree when Neil disappeared. One moment he was next to Todd, passing through a shadow, and then he was simply gone: the flame of a snuffed candle.

            Todd stopped for a moment. His hand found the newspaper clipping, shoved into the very corner of his coat pocket. He sighed unsteadily, watching his breath puff into the air and hang, crystalline.

            He walked home as quickly as he could, willing the cold out of his trembling legs. He fingered the paper, feeling it fold, soften, and eventually fall apart at the seams. Far away, the owl hooted once, and, after a few seconds of quiet, its mate returned the call. Todd drew some comfort from that – the night was deep and shadowed, but, somehow, he didn’t feel alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey please leave a comment if you have thirty seconds and enjoyed reading !! it keeps me motivated and helps me improve <3


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